All the Water in the World
Objectives
Students will be able to:
- identify the forms and locations where water is found
- interpret a map to estimate key information
- describe the amount and distribution of water on the earth, in oceans, rivers, lakes, groundwater, ice caps and the atmosphere
Focus Question: How much water is there on earth, and where is it located?
- Display world map and have students respond to the question. Try to cover all the categories.
- Explain task. Student have to estimate the water suppy on Earth. They are to asssume that 2L (or 2000L) of water represents all the water in the world.
- Hand out materials. Basic procedure is to just follow the worksheet.
Prepare 8 containers to hold the amounts of water for each of the item in the table below--a large container for the oceans. Ask students to use an atlas (or globe) to estimate how much of the total water is taken by each of the water resources.
Resources for the teacher: Student worksheet, table with percentage of water resource and total amount out of 2 l of water.
Student worksheet:
1. If 2 L, or 2000 ml of water is "all the water in the
world," how many litres of water would be in the oceans?
____________ ml of water (out of 2000 ml total) are in the
oceans.
2. Using your estimate for the amount of water in the oceans,
calculate how much water
would not be in the oceans as follows:
2000m1 (total) - ___________ ml (in the oceans) = _________ of water
not in the oceans.
3. Remove the amount of water that is "not" in the oceans from
the original 2000 ml of water.
Now decide how to divide this "not in the oceans" water among the
other categories of water. Write the group estimates of the volume of
water that should be placed in each category.
Volume of Water(ml)
Freshwater lakes: _____________________________
Inland seas/salt lakes:________________________
rivers:________________________________________
groundwater: __________________________________
icecaps/glaciers: _____________________________
soil moisture & atmosphere: ____________________
Label the remaining containers and measure out the amount of water that you assigned to each of these categories.
For the teacher:
|
Category |
% of total water in the world |
Equivalent in ml (out of 2 L "all the water in the world container) |
|
freshwater lakes |
|
|
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inland seas/salt lakes |
|
|
|
rivers |
|
|
|
groundwater |
|
|
|
icecaps/glaciers |
|
|
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soil moisture |
|
|
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and atmosphere |
|
|